Chase a kite at the coast, follow fall color in the Piedmont, ride a unicycle in the mountains … North Carolina gives you all kinds of options this weekend. Coast One of the best workouts going is a day at the beach: Chasing kids into the water, getting chased out of the water by a rogue (waist-high) wave, building sand castle fortresses (upper body workout). Something about the beach just…

<iframe width=”425″ height=”349″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/8R8G203bDl4?hl=en&fs=1″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe> Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere…

In the mid-1990s the Triangle’s greenway system wasn’t a system. It was a disjointed connection of asphalt strips scattered hither and yon. If you lived a block or two away from one of these strips, you probably paid it an occasional visit. If you didn’t live within a block or two, you probably had no idea the Triangle even had greenways. Then the Triangle Greenways Council came up with the…

North Carolina’s brilliant fall weather means all kinds of events and programs will be competing for your attention. This weekend, for instance, you can paddle a swamp, run 5 miles on a greenway that doesn’t yet exist or take a really, really (really) long ride in the mountains. Coast I’m a sucker for paddling at Merchants Millpond State Park, so if I’ve recommended this kayaking program before, forgive me. It’s…

Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. 
To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake…

Depending upon how adventurous you are, the first 8-mile installment of the Neuse River Greenway is open. Based on a scouting expedition yesterday, roughly 7.9 miles of the Raleigh greenway, which eventually will run the length of the Neuse in Wake County, are finished. That tenth of a mile that’s not technically opened is over two short stretches. The first comes 2.6 miles from the northern trailhead at Falls of…

Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. 
To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake…

… where I’ll be spending the next three days getting around exclusively by bike and mass transit. It’s an exercise largely to see what it’s like to be mobile in a city with extensive bike paths and routes, a city where bikes are accepted and incorporated into the transportation system. I’m also interested to see how bike transport integrates with Denver’s mass transit system, RTD, which includes an extensive bus…

Sail the not-so-high seas, run with the lions and tigers and bears, take a long bike ride in the mountains. You’ve got all sorts of options in North Carolina this weekend. Coast You’ve taken the local learn-to-sail class on the local lake, and it was fun. It also made you wonder what it would be like to sail the high seas. Or if not “high” — because, frankly, that sounds…